Shopify

What it does

Shopify is a hosted platform for selling online. You get a storefront, a product catalogue, a checkout, payment handling, order management and a back office in one admin. Themes control how the store looks, and apps from the Shopify app store add features on top.

It also has point of sale tools for selling in person, and an Agentic plan for listing products in AI channels such as ChatGPT, Perplexity and Microsoft Copilot. Plans run from a basic plan for solo sellers up to Advanced for larger teams, with Shopify Plus as the enterprise tier. There is a short free trial before you pay.

Why you would need it

The pain shows up when you try to sell online with a patchwork: a form here, a payment link there, a spreadsheet of orders. Every sale needs manual work, stock drifts out of sync and customers cannot see where their order is.

Shopify replaces that with one system where a purchase creates an order, updates stock and starts the shipping steps. For a business that is growing, this is the moment selling stops being a side task and becomes a process. A hosted platform also means someone else patches the servers and keeps checkout fast and secure.

Where it fits

Shopify sits at the centre of the sales side of your stack. It is fed by your product data, by traffic from ads and email, and by your payment provider. It feeds your accounting, your email and SMS tools, your helpdesk and your analytics.

Tools such as Klaviyo, Gorgias and Drip have integrations with it and treat it as the source of orders and customers. It replaces a custom-built store, or a store bolted onto a content site.

What stands out

• A wide API surface. The GraphQL Admin API reads and writes products, customers, orders and inventory, and the Storefront API supports custom storefronts.
• An official developer MCP server that connects AI coding tools to Shopify's docs and API schemas.
• Agentic selling, where you add products and choose which AI channels to sell in, and only pay when a sale happens.
• A point of sale add-on for physical shops, with in-store inventory management and pickup options.

My take

I'd pick Shopify when the shop is the business. You sell products, you want checkout to work from day one and you would rather pay a fee than maintain code. The time saved on payments, tax set-up and checkout is the real value.

I'd skip it when you mainly sell services or subscriptions with custom billing, or when you want full control of your own code and already run WordPress. WooCommerce is the usual alternative there. What I'd watch is cost creep, because the plan is only part of the bill and apps, themes and payment fees add up.

Verdict

Pick it when you sell products online and want a hosted store with a large app and developer ecosystem. Skip it when you need heavy custom logic, own a WordPress site you want to keep, or sell mostly services.